Group14 Technologies, a provider of silicon-carbon composite materials for global lithium-ion markets, announced that it has been selected as a winner of the Department Of Energy’s Energy Storage Grand Challenge and will receive a $3.96-million award. Group14 is leading a $5-million project to integrate best-in-class synergistic technologies, delivering batteries that will meet the performance objectives for tomorrow’s electric vehicles.

The Vehicle Technologies Office of the DOE issued the challenge to accelerate scalable solutions to meet the demands for lithium-ion-based storage. Group14, along with its project partners, was selected for its novel approach designed to deliver cost-effective, application-specific performance range across diverse markets including electric vehicles, consumer electronics, medical devices and aerospace.

Founded in 2015 as a spin-off from EnerG2, Group14 has developed a new elemental approach to produce ultra-high purity, high capacity silicon-carbon compound materials at low-cost to power the electrified world. Group14’s technology applies complex polymer chemistries to create high-performance silicon-carbon nanocomposites.

Group14’s nanomaterials technology, Scaffold Prime, is a patented, simple carbon chemistry process that transforms ultra-high purity raw precursors into silicon-carbon material, which is then tuned to the ideal electrochemical properties per given use case.

Scaffold Prime enables a 30-50% density increase with its silicon-carbon, tunable battery materials.

Group14, along with key project partner, Cabot Corporation, will work together with Farasis, Silatronix, Arkema, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories to commercialize this novel approach to meet the demand for higher-performance batteries.

Key project partner Cabot Corporation will to provide solutions for carbon formulation and dispersion development, drawing from its broad range of carbon materials for battery applications.

Group14 has begun to ramp up the development of new technologies and is scaling its team to meet the increasing demand for its product. In the meantime, Group14 is working toward completing its new North American commercial facility in Washington.